today's special Hall of Fame election for Negro Leaguers

Candidate bios, etc, here:

http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/negro_leaguers.htm

Current members of the BBHoF who were Negro Leaguers.

# Satchel Paige, pitcher
# Josh Gibson, catcher
# Buck Leonard, first baseman
# Martin Dihigo, second baseman
# Judy Johnson, third baseman
# Pop Lloyd, shortstop
# Cool Papa Bell, leftfield
# Oscar Charleston, centerfield
# Monte Irvin, rightfield

White HoFers Elected betwen 1935 (start of the HoF) and 1945 (The yeah Jackie Robinson broke in and the effective end of the HoF-caliber NL player). There are executives in this list, that I didn't bother to delete.

Ty Cobb
Walter Johnson
Christy Mathewson
Babe Ruth
Honus Wagner
Morgan Bulkeley
Ban Johnson
Nap Lajoie
Connie Mack
John McGraw
Tris Speaker
George Wright
Cy Young
Pete Alexander
Alexander Cartwright
Henry Chadwick
Cap Anson
Eddie Collins
Charlie Comiskey
Candy Cummings
Buck Ewing
Lou Gehrig
Willie Keeler
Charles Radbourn
George Sisler
Al Spalding
Rogers Hornsby
Kenesaw Mountain Landis
Roger Bresnahan
Dan Brouthers
Fred Clarke
Jimmy Collins
Ed Delahanty
Hugh Duffy
Hughie Jennings
King Kelly
Jim O'Rourke
Wilbert Robinson

If we acccept the pretense that the BBHoF should only include the 1-2% of all MLB/NL players of a given time frame, then it seems doubtful that there would be some 20-odd NL players that would make it in when taking into account the diluted skill level wrt pitching and etc. Now, granted, this is basically the same argument that ppl will be making for sluggers of the 1990's.

So in summation, with a maximum of 20 players (the VAST majority of them from the NL)... baseball has probably capped out it's HoF-worthy NLers for all time... before they all pass on, which is admirable.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2346848

http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2009/pr09_118.htm#negro

Torii dropping THE TRUTH

In the report, Hunter was quoted as saying: “People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they’re African-American. They’re not us. They’re impostors. Even people I know come up and say: ‘Hey, what color is Vladimir Guerrero(notes)? Is he a black player?’ I say, ‘Come on, he’s Dominican. He’s not black.’ …

“As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us. It’s like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper. It’s like, ‘Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?’ … I’m telling you, it’s sad,” he said.

Black players accounted for 10.2 percent of major leaguers in 2008, the most since the 1995 season, according to the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports.

i'm now curious what the og american born african-american percentage might be

"I keep saying a lot of times, in 10 more years American people are going to need a visa to play this game because we're going to take over. We're going to," Guillen said.

Yeesh.

new: the Seamheads.com Negro Leagues Database

http://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/index.php

No Jackie Robinson thread (better here than the John Rocker thread with Jackie's name in the title)...Sixty-fifth anniversary of his debut; I knew the Jays had a JR day planned, but I hadn't given any thought as to why (nor did I realize his debut coincided with the anniversary of Lincoln's death).

http://cnnsi.com/2012/writers/richard_rothschild/04/13/jackie.robinson/index.html?eref=sihp&sct=hp_t11_a0

Seamheads has added 1924 to their Negro Leagues database.

http://www.seamheads.com/NegroLgs/year.php?yearID=1924

Heavy Johnson is new to me.

Yeah I feel like I'd remember that name.

Never knew that there were "best available information" Negro League stats on Baseball Reference. Josh Gibson's career box isn't too bad:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/nlb/player.cgi?id=gibson002jos

.907 slugging average in 1937--must have been into the PEDs.

The other 15 men who integrated the MLB teams of the '40s and '50s... like the 1955 Yankees and the 1959 Red Sox.

http://mlb.si.com/2014/04/15/jackie-robinson-day-mlb-integration-ernie-banks-elston-howard-larry-doby/

Nice to see my old 'pal' Monte Irvin (I was on a Cuba baseball tour with him 11 years ago) is still sharp and giving interviews. He'll be 96 in a couple weeks.

http://houston.cbslocal.com/2015/01/20/an-mlk-day-field-trip-with-a-baseball-legend/

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-suwmwXIAI4_jC.jpg

today, even

a month younger than Jackie R.

We were at a night game in Havana at the big stadium, where Monte had played in '47, and he grabbed his crutch midgame, stood up, and took his stance with it.

https://photos.metrotimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Hamtramck-Stadium-Benefit-Game-July-11-2019-79.jpg

https://photos.metrotimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Hamtramck-Stadium-Benefit-Game-July-11-2019-28.jpg

Ahead of this weekend's back-to-back Detroit dates with his band the Raconteurs, rock star Jack White played a charity baseball game at the historic Hamtramck Stadium. The event benefited the Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium, a group raising money to rehab the historic grounds, which are one of the few remaining Negro League ballparks in the country.

https://photos.metrotimes.com/everything-we-saw-at-jack-whites-charity-baseball-game-at-the-historic-hamtramck-stadium/?slide=1&hamtramck-stadium-benefit-game-july-11-2019-92

https://www.mlb.com/news/baseball-globalization-traced-to-negro-leagues

Because of a prejudiced decision made more than 50 years ago, the segregation-era circuits that featured Black players have never been counted among the official major leagues. For the first time, MLB is considering righting that wrong.

https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2020/8/14/21368488/major-league-negro-leagues-classification

Commissioner Manfred announced today that @MLB is officially elevating the Negro Leagues to “Major League” status. Culminating the centennial celebration of the founding of the Negro Leagues, MLB is proud to highlight the contributions of the pioneers who played from 1920-1948. pic.twitter.com/hkStF1UC0H

— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) December 16, 2020

https://www.theringer.com/mlb/2020/12/16/22178257/mlb-acknowledge-negro-leagues-officially

wow! does that mean josh gibson is the official HR king now?

i think they still need to find documentation (box scores or something) for all his homers, but . . . possibly

a contrary view: https://theundefeated.com/features/mlb-elevating-the-status-of-negro-leagues-is-the-problem-not-the-solution

also saw someone asking if mlb will now be offering pensions to the handful of negro leaguers who are still alive

xp

seems like the stats thing will be complicated.

Since Negro League seasons were typically much shorter than MLB seasons, the sport’s career records for “counting” stats — such as Barry Bonds’s 762 home runs and Pete Rose’s 4,256 hits — are largely safe, if only because top Negro Leaguers are credited with having played between 1,000 and 1,600 career games, as opposed to, say, Rose’s 3,562.

For example, Gibson, who spent much of his career in Washington playing for the Homestead Grays and is considered the Negro Leagues’ most prolific slugger, is credited on his Hall of Fame plaque with hitting “almost 800 home runs.” Many of them, however, were on barnstorming tours and are not part of the official record, as determined by the Seamheads researchers, who credit him with only 238 in Negro League play — still most among Negro Leaguers.

The all-time MLB rankings for “rate” statistics, such as batting average, on the other hand, could see a wholesale rewriting. Gibson’s career batting average of .365, for example, would rank second only to Cobb’s .366 and — along with Jud Wilson’s .359, Charleston’s .350 and Turkey Stearns’s .348 — would push Babe Ruth’s .342 out of the top 10. Gibson’s career slugging percentage of .690 would edge out Ruth’s .6897 as the highest in major league history.

Single-season stats would also be affected, with Gibson’s .441 batting average in 1943 supplanting Hugh Duffy’s .440 for the 1897 Boston Beaneaters of the National League as the highest in a single season in history. Ted Williams, who hit .406 for the Boston Red Sox in 1941, would lose his status as the last player to hit .400 in a single season.

looks like mlb + elias are going to do some research to determine what goes in the record books

Didn't have time to read the Ringer piece this morning, but after "Good job," the messiness of records was the first thing that occurred to me. Interested to hear Hank Aaron's thoughts.

Not that something like this would distract his attention from COVID, but Trump still has a month to issue an executive order that all white-guy baseball records must remain standing.

b-ref updates: https://www.baseball-reference.com/negro-leagues-are-major-leagues.shtml

(this makes dustin ackley the 20,000th major league player)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2022/06/21/hamtramck-negro-league-ballpark-renovation-unveiled/7681794001/

After a $2.6 million renovation, the historic Hamtramck Stadium — one of the few remaining Negro League ballparks in America — was unveiled Monday with a ceremony and a Negro Leagues tribute baseball game.

The event honored native Detroiter Ron Teasley Sr., one of four living players from the Major Negro Leagues’ era, the Friends of Historic Hamtramck Stadium said. Teasley played with the New York Cubans in the Negro National League in 1948 and also played in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm system.

Teasley, a Wayne State University graduate, taught for more than 30 years and coached baseball, basketball and golf at Detroit’s Northwestern High School for more than two decades. Teasley spoke at the event, and was joined by his family and a few of the players he had coached.